Complete Writings : Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations

Renowned in her day for her scholarship and eloquence, Isotta Nogarola (1418-66) remained one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance for centuries after her death. And because she was one of the first women to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated republic of letters, Nogarola served as a crucial role model for generations of aspiring female artists and writers.

This volume presents English translations of all of Nogarola's extant works and highlights just how daring and original her convictions were. In her letters and orations, Nogarola elegantly synthesized Greco-Roman thought with biblical teachings. And striding across the stage in public, she lectured the Veronese citizenry on everything from history and religion to politics and morality. But the most influential of Nogarola's works was a performance piece, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, in which she discussed the relative sinfulness of Adam and Eve—thereby opening up a centuries-long debate in Europe on gender and the nature of woman and establishing herself as an important figure in Western intellectual history. This book will be a must read for teachers and students of Women's Studies as well as of Renaissance literature and history.

Margaret L. King is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Diana Robin is a professor emerita of classics at the University of New Mexico.

Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr.edit The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series for the University of Chicago Press.

Diana Robin is professor emerita of classics at the University of New Mexico and a scholar in residence at the Newberry Library. She has written, edited, and translated several books, most recently Isotta Nogarola’s Complete Writings, also published by the University of Chicago Press.